Choosing the Right Shutter Speed

Josh (QUESTION): Recently, I’ve been getting back into photography and when I was riding back from the beach, I noticed the reflection of the moon in a puddle, and I really wanted to take a crisp picture of it with the border of the puddle. I’m not sure if it was still the shakiness of my hands, but the reflection would still turn out blurry. Any tips or settings I should set my camera to?

Phillip Van Nostrand (ANSWER): One tip about shutter speed that I’ve mentioned before is to never shoot with a shutter speed slower than 1/50 or even 1/100th of a second. The average person can hand hold at about 1/100th of a second, and anything slower than that is too shaky for the camera to pull off.

As for silhouettes, you will want to do the opposite. Make the shutter speed faster or close down the aperture (to a larger number like f/11 or f/16). Keep making the picture darker until you get the right balance of sunset colors and silhouetted trees.